President of Romania's ruling Social Democratic Party Liviu Dragnea addresses journalists as he arrives at the High Court of Cassation and Justice to attend a hearing on his trial in Bucharest on March 21, 2018 | Daniel Mikhailescu/AFP via Getty Images

Romania proposes judicial change that could help governing party leader

Proposed changes to Romanian judicial law could help governing party leader Liviu Dragnea reopen the court case that has stopped him becoming prime minister.

The changes, put forward by a special parliamentary committee and unveiled Wednesday, say all judges involved in a trial must sign off on the case. If they don’t, the trial would have to be held again.

The Social Democratic Party (PSD) lawmaker was given a suspended jail sentence for attempting to rig a referendum in 2012, but one of the judges in the case retired before he was sentenced. Dragnea tried to use that as a reason to appeal against the sentence in 2017 but it was rejected, according to Ziare.com. Because of his conviction, Dragnea cannot be prime minister, although he still rules over the PSD.

The special parliamentary committee on Wednesday published numerous other proposed amendments to the country’s criminal laws.

One of the changes is that prosecutors or other public authorities cannot communicate publicly about ongoing investigations, unless in exceptional circumstances. Prosecutors at the National Anticorruption Directorate at present publish press releases whenever public officials are indicted. The media attention some of these cases attract has led to politicians saying they don’t receive a fair trial and are being judged in the court of public opinion.

The changes, which are meant to transpose into Romanian law a 2016 EU law on the presumption of innocence, will be discussed in the special committee on Thursday.

The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body warned earlier this month about some of these planned changes, saying they would “clearly contradict some of Romania’s international commitments, including the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption.”

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Iron Worker

Honestly, “rigging election” is a pretty darn serious felony (not a misdemeanor), getting a suspended sentence on the other hand, without hard evidences, the judge (Livia Stanciu) leaving without motivating the sentence being appointed by (the accomplice) Klaus Werner Johannis at Constitutional Court, and in the same time blocking/delaying Dragnea’s right to address ECHR (without a sentence motivation) …well, not quite “rigging elections” after all, eliminating political adversaries more like. It seems rather a rigged trial than “rigged elections”.